SAN SALVADOR. 



47 



and falling, marks of the earthquakes which had broken 

 it up as the seat of government, and almost depopula- 

 ted the city. This series of earthquakes commenced 

 on the third of the preceding October (the same day on 

 which I sailed for that country), and for twenty days the 

 earth was tremulous, sometimes suffering fifteen or 

 twenty shocks in twenty-four hours, and one so severe 

 that, as Mr. Chatfield told me, a bottle standing in his 

 sleeping-room was thrown down. Most of the inhabi- 

 tants abandoned the city, and those who remained slept 

 under matting in the courtyards of their houses. Every 

 house was more or less injured ; some were rendered 

 untenantable, and many were thrown down. Two days 

 before, the vice-president and officers of the Federal 

 and State Governments, impelled by the crisis of the 

 times, had returned to their shattered capital. It was 

 about one o'clock, intensely hot, and there was no 

 shade ; the streets were solitary, the doors and windows 

 of the houses closed, the shops around the plaza shut, 

 the little matted tents of the market-women deserted, and 

 the inhabitants, forgetting earthquakes, and that a hos- 

 tile army was marching upon them, were taking their 

 noonday siesta. In a corner of the plaza was a barri- 

 cado, constructed with trunks of trees, rude as an In- 

 dian fortress, and fortified with cannon, intended as the 

 scene of the last effort for the preservation of the city. 

 A few soldiers were asleep under the corridor of the 

 quartel, and a sentinel was pacing before the door. 

 Inquiring our way of him, we turned the corner of the 

 plaza, and stopped at the house of Don Pedro Negrete, 

 at that time acting as vice-consul both of England and 

 France, and the only representative at the capital of 

 any foreign power. 



It was one of the features of this unhappy revolution, 



